An insightful article from:
http://www.afterelton.com/columns/2006/4/lastgayword.htmlAnd Ebert and Roeper did not get this? Ahh, I expect too much from their tiny Neanderthal brains...
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The Last Gay Word: The Land Beyond Brokeback Mountain by Brent Hartinger, April 26, 2006
Before Brokeback Mountain, most gay-themed entertainment projects were...how do I put this charitably?
They were crap.
Portrayals of gay characters on television have alternated between outrageous, usually offensive stereotypes, and noble victims meant to transmit some preachy message to the apparently completely heterosexual audience. In books, we've had an endless stream of self-hating gay men who screw their friends and mess up their lives with irresponsible sex and indiscriminate drug use.
And movies? Don't get me started.
Too late, I'm started. In addition to outrageous stereotypes and noble victims, the big studios have also given us an unending parade of simpering gay and/or effeminate villains in movies like Rope, Diamonds are Forever, In Cold Blood, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Psycho, Jeepers Creepers 2, The Silence of the Lambs, Dreamcatcher, The Lion King, Basic Instinct, Stargate, The Passion of the Christ, Strangers on a Train, Die Hard, Suddenly Last Summer, Aladdin, and Constantine.
And the low budget independent movies–- the ones ostensibly told from the point-of-view of an actual gay person to an actual gay audience? They've often been laughably acted, incomprehensibly written, or both.
Oh, sure, there have been some fine gay projects, especially lately: TV shows like Six Feet Under, Xena: Warrior Princess, and Buffy, the Vampire Slayer; movies like Trick, Big Eden, Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, Mambo Italiano, Summer Storm, and Beautiful Thing; and books like The Year of Ice by Brian Malloy, Leave Myself Behind by Bart Yates, the “Silent Empire” series by Steven Harper, My Lucky Star by Joe Keenan, and How I Learned to Snap by Kirk Read.
But let's face it, they've been too few and too far between.
I didn't used to care about whether or not a gay project was “good.” I was just so starved to see myself represented on screen or in the pages of a book that I took whatever I could get.
Okay, so maybe Brokeback Mountain didn't change the world, but it did change me. And I don't just mean in a love now or you'll spend the rest of your life sitting in a crappy trailer park staring at a faded photograph and sniffing a bloody flannel shirt kind of way.
I mean the way I view gay-themed movies, books, and TV shows.
Regardless of whether you think Brokeback Mountain deserved to win Best Picture -- and if you don't, you're JUST PLAIN WRONG!
-- there is no denying it was a quality project. Great writing, incredible acting, stellar cinematography, even a distinctive, understated score.
That's why I tuned in regularly to watch horrible sitcoms like Love, Sidney, a 1981 series with Tony Randall as a gay man living with Swoosie Kurtz, but who never actually mentions the fact that he's gay.
That's also why I went to all those gay film festivals and sat through all those terrible movies by Gregg Araki (who supposedly did a good job on Mysterious Skin, which I won't see solely because Araki made me sit through all those earlier, horrible movies).
I didn't even care that so few of these projects were told from the point-of-view of the gay person. Even the first big AIDS movie, 1993's Philadelphia, was told from the POV of a homophobic straight person. And in 1987, the ABC Afterschool Special series did a program called “What If I'm Gay?” Despite the provocative title, it was more about the reactions of straight people to their gay friend (though it did have a great twist, where the “gay” person of the title doesn't turn out to be the person everyone, including the audience, thinks it is! Alas, unlike other Afterschool Specials, “What If I'm Gay?” is not yet available on video or DVD).
I didn't even care when the portrayals of gay people were, uh, unorthodox. When I first read Anne Rice's “Vampire” books, I was transfixed, not just because the first few at least are incredible reads, but because I was reading about actual passion between men. Granted, there was no sex, and the characters in question were vampires who were usually sucking the blood out of their male victims. Hey, you can't have everything, right?
But suddenly I've seen that it doesn't have to be that way. Brokeback Mountain was a quality project told from the point-of-view of its gay characters, about a uniquely gay situation (despite all the people who mistakenly proclaimed it to be a “universal” love story). The characters weren't stereotypes, villains, or noble victims.
In short, I don't have to accept vampirism as a metaphor for gay love anymore. I can tell tenth-rate filmmakers like Greg Araki to go take a flying leap. And I can accept that we've passed the time for well-intentioned movies like Philadelphia, which were designed to “educate” the heterosexual audience, but which had virtually nothing interesting to say about the central truth of being gay.
Now that I've seen a truly great gay project like Brokeback Mountain, I'm suddenly much less willing to accept anything less. Already I can feel it in myself: a welling anger with offensive or condescending gay portrayals, and a growing impatience with obviously inferior movies and books that survived in the marketplace solely because nothing better existed.
In short, now that I've seen Paree, why the hell would I stay down on the farm?
I suspect a lot of other gay guys are feeling this way too, eager to explore the land beyond Brokeback Mountain.
Here's hoping it's fertile.
And that is the last gay word.
Brent Hartinger is the author of the gay teen novel, Geography Club, which is currently being adapted for the movies. The sequel, The Order of the Poison Oak, is just out in paperback, and his latest novel, Grand & Humble, is in stores now. Explore "Brent's Brain," his website, at
www.brenthartinger.com.
